Whether it’s a sweltering 90 degree humid day in Boston or frigid with a wind-chill below zero, Bostonian’s don’t seem to change their eating preferences at all. Well, maybe some more favorite adult beverages in the summer months but outside that Bostonians tend to sample new but drift back to their favorites.

The La Befana team thought it would be amusing to take another one of our polls and this time ask about famous foods in Boston.

We’ve taken a few liberties but hope you still enjoy our list with some light-hearted comments and all in sense of fun.

Boston Cream Pie:

Officially the Boston Cream Pie was created by French Chef M. Sanzian at Boston’s Parker House Hotel in downtown Boston. It was declared the official dessert of Massachusetts in 1996. While it’s called a “pie” it doesn’t have a crust but is two layers of cake separated by usually a vanilla custard filling and topped with a chocolate glaze.

You’ll find this on most Boston restaurant menus but despite it being famous it’s not one of Boston’s highest exports to rest of the nation. It seems most regions have figured out how to make this dessert and it doesn’t have to be made in Boston to be called Boston Crème Pie.

Boston Baked Beans:

One of Boston’s nicknames is “Beantown.” Boston Baked Beans is a type of baked bean which traditionally uses molasses and flavored with pork – usually bacon. The recipe dates back to pilgrim times when the recipes were learned form the Native Americans and adjusted by the pilgrims and eaten along with corn bread as a meal mostly on Sundays.

Today it’s used as a side dish, although we have one member of our staff who warms up Boston Beans and pours them over toast for a meal called “beans on toast” – they say it’s popular in Britain, although I don’t think Boston Beans are required.

Clam Chowder:

Because of the population size of Boston then it consumes a lot of the New England Clam Chowder served up each year by region restaurants. Chowder can come in many varieties such as sea food and fish chowder, but most famous is clam chowder. Clams are plentiful in New England and are very tasty when added to a thickened broth and called chowder.

At one time Clam Chowder was served predominately on Fridays to satisfy religious requirements for Catholics but today you can feast on it any day of the week – and Boston does!

Ice Cream:

This is a pretty safe bet to include in any list, including Boston. Ice Cream remains the favorite dessert of the nation but maybe surprisingly New England leads the country in ice cream consumption per capita. You can bet a good deal of that is sold in the Boston area especially with all the tourism the city sees during the warmer months.

But frankly, it’s popular anytime of the year – even in those frigid below-zero days! Well, maybe not as much on its own but warm apple pie topped off with a scoop of vanilla ice cream takes some beating if on the menu.

Pizza:

Definitely not “invented” in Boston but very popular none the same around the city, pizza remains a popular food in Beantown. It’s versatile for a quick on the move meal but can also be found on the menu of trendy local restaurants. Over the years Boston has achieved a reputation for average and “nothing to write home about” pizza. Personally, we think this has been spread about by New Yorkers – probably Yankee fans!

Seriously though there is some truth to the mediocrity criticism leveled at Boston produced pizza. Of course at La Befana Pizzeria we believe we have the perfect antidote to that criticism in our gourmet pizza line.

Our garlic knots have proved to be one of our most popular items and so we’ve decided to give customers a chance to try them… for FREE.

With the purchase of any one of our Extra Large pizzas or if you make any purchase over $20 we’ll give you one of the hottest selling item we have – Garlic Knots – for FREE!

You can see L.C. our Master Pizza Chef with a fresh piping-hop batch of his garlic knots in the picture. Geez, they look so good we keep reaching into the picture to taste one. He takes as much care when making these as one of his gourmet pizzas.

But we’re not stopping there because we’ve also decided that if you purchase any two Extra Large pizzas then you can get a FREE Medium Cheese pizza, or our famous Jumbo Wings, or a Pasta and Sauce Dinner.

We think these are the best deals in any pizza place in Allston and Boston neighborhood pizza shop.

There’s a lot of information out on the web and most of it is… well junk and misinformation.

Sifting through what is good and what can be ignored takes dedication and effort and it’s so much better if somebody you trust does that for you.

When it comes to information about food and pizza then nobody does it better than the California Culinary Schools web site. They recently did a review of pizza blogs and listed their 50 Delicious Pizza Blogs here.

In this list you’ll find blogs with recipes a bunch devoted to recommended area pizza places such as New York, L.A., D.C.

You’ll also find one’s focused on gluten-free pizza, audio clips from pizza lover interviews, and whole bunch more including a blog about the worst pizza place.

Be warned about anything that proposes to list the worst blah blah. It’s usually one person with an axe to grind so just ensure with anything good and bad you read a selection of reviews about one place before you decide to try it or pass it by.

Some of the sites mentioned are no more than clips and extracts from other blogs but conveniently located in one blog. If you’re looking for recipes and latest news about your favorite food then you’ll find it in one of these listed blogs.

So enjoy this resource and like anything on the web be careful out there!

When we opened La Befana Pizzeria doors in Allston Massachusetts in spring 2011 we wanted to be offering our customers the ease of online ordering.

It took us a few weeks after we opened though to get everything in place to offer that feature and since we started we’ve seen a steady increase in its use and our business. Given our location and the population we serve we expect online ordering of pizza to continue to climb.

We think ordering online offers the following benefits to our customers:

Convenient from anywhere you have an internet access.

See the menu items and tick-off what you want the way you want it.

Chance to keep up-to-date with new menu items and discounts without visiting the restaurant for that information – which let’s face it isn’t always convenient for you.

No misinterpretation of what you want – sometimes with a busy and noisy restaurant the order on the phone can be difficult to capture correctly by the order taker.

Chance to review and validate at checkout exactly what you’re about to order.

Ability to pay with credit card online so there’s no fumbling for cash or change when picking-up at restaurant or on delivery to you.

But we’re not the only ones that think it’s a growing trend and something to offer our customers – so does Cornell University.

Recent research at the university concluded that nearly 50% of pizza restaurants now accept orders online, and “once customers try online ordering they’re far were more likely to continue to use it and the trend was only going to get bigger” according to one of the co-authors of the study, professor Sheryl E. Kimes.

Ms. Kimes also expressed surprise at the high incidence of online ordering in the study. However, we at La Befana Pizzeria are not surprised at all and saw it coming even as we were getting ready to open.

While pizza is a large part of our life at La Befana in Allston when you’re at home and making your own pizza on the grill in the summer then try something different for a topping instead of tomato sauce.

We know many people wouldn’t think of having pizza without tomato sauce and cheese however, you’d be surprised the concoctions we’ve come across and tried and they taste surprisingly good.

So instead of tomato sauce experiment with alternatives. Here are a few to consider:

Pesto – try one of the flavoring that includes mushrooms and sausage.

Tapenade – for a Mediterranean flavor.

Muhammara – if red peppers is your poison.

Barbecue Sauce – yep, a summer favorite on pizza dough!

Buffalo Sauce – not for the faint of heart.

Peanut Sauce – tastes much better than it looks.

Hummus – if you’re in the mood for a vegetarian pizza look no further.

For more traditional tomato sauce based pizzas then try one of our classic gourmet pizza for our Allston and Brighton customers. We hope you enjoyed learning about alternative sauce toppings pizza and look for other posts about pizza ingredients.

Its July 4th weekend here in Boston and you all know what that means right?

Yeah – Chocolate Pizza!

Eh? Well okay – how about Boston Pops and fireworks and no place to park and thousands of people looking for food? For a place like La Befana Pizzeria in Allston, MA, and to steal a line from the Eagles’ Hotel California, “this could be heaven or it could be hell.”

With the Red Sox back on July 4th for a home day game the city focuses the evening on America’s birthday and the traditional activities scheduled for July 4th, 2011 on the Esplanade.

Arrive before 2:00pm if you want to get a seat – a good seat requires you heading out there… now!

If you’re traveling into Boston then do come early and park well away from the Charles and walk over to the Esplanade. The weather for Monday looks like being great.

Now back to that Chocolate Pizza.

The La Befana team – all of us – love chocolate. And we joked the other day about having a chocolate topping on a pizza. We got all excited for a minute because we thought we’d had an original idea. But then a member mentioned they’d seen a chocolate pizza mentioned in a menu once.

In disbelief we searched our trusty Google friend and within a few seconds our hearts sank as we come across the chocolate specialty store and restaurant Max Brenner. And there in their sweet menu is the white and chocolate pizza. It looks outstanding and we can’t wait to try it!

Unfortunately, there aren’t many locations in the U.S. Las Vegas is probably the most famous and they have one in Philadelphia and NY City – the rest are scattered across the globe.

Well, here’s the great news – there’s now a fourth in America. And yes, it’s in Beantown in the Back Bay district – 745 Boylston to be exact.

So now we can all have Chocolate Pizza in Boston this weekend. Well we can – you guys will have to take care of yourselves. And who knows if we learn the secrets and we have enough customers who ask for it – then maybe La Befana Pizzeria may just be the second place in Boston to offer Chocolate Pizza – what do you say?

For more traditional pizzas then try one of our classic gourmet pizza for our Allston and Brookline customers. We hope you enjoyed learning about chocolate pizza and look for other posts about pizza and Boston activities.